Chapter 27, David said in his heart, I shall
now perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me
than that I should speedily escape
into the land of the Philistines. And Saul shall despair of me
to seek me any more in any coast of Israel. So shall I escape
out of his hand. And David arose. He passed over
with the 600 men that were with him unto Achish, the son of Maok,
king of Gath. And David dwelt with Achish at
Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, even David
with his two wives, Ahinoam and the Jezreelites, and Abigail
the Carmelites, Nabal's wife. And it was told Saul that David
was fled to Gath, and he sought no more again for him. And David
said unto Achish, If I have now found grace in thine eyes, let
them give me a place in some town in the country, that I may
dwell there. For why should thy servant dwell
in the royal city with thee? Then Achish gave him Ziklag that
day. Wherefore, Ziklag pertaineth
unto the kings of Judah unto this day. And the time that David
dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months.
And David and his men went up and invaded the Geshurites and
the Gesrites and the Amalekites, for those nations were of old
the inhabitants of the land, as thou goest to Shur, even unto
the land of Egypt. And David smoked the land and
left neither man nor woman alive, and took away the sheep and the
oxen and the asses and the camels and the apparel, and returned
and came to Achish. And Achish said, Whither have
you made a road today? And David said, Against the south
of Judah, and against the south of the Jeremelites, against the
south of the Kenites. And David saved neither man nor
woman alive to bring tidings to Gath, saying, Lest they should
tell on us. saying, so did David, and so
will be his manner all the while he dwelleth in the country of
the Philistines. And Achish believed David, saying, he hath made his
people Israel utterly to abhor him. Therefore he shall be my
servant forever. Now David's statement in verse
one, and just in general first, Among all the beautiful pictures
of our Savior that we see in David, we're reminded now and
then in David's life that David is just David too. And this is
one of those. You'd be hard-pressed to find
anything that typifies Christ in David in this chapter. I've
never heard it and I'd be skeptical of it if I did. It's just not
there. But look what David says in verse
1. Saul's going to kill me one of these days. He said in his
heart, Saul's going to kill me. And that was realistic. There was clear evidence that
Saul wanted to kill him and Saul had every possible means of killing David. It sounded
reasonable that that might happen. And perhaps even insightful,
though Saul had just got through, we don't know how much time passed
between these two chapters, that's always a consideration, but the
last word we have from Saul to David was, everything's fine
now, I will not try to hurt you anymore. And then the next words
from David are, he's gonna kill me. And that's insightful, I
mean, he knew Saul's heart, Saul had proven what type of person
he was. and he didn't trust him and that's
good and right. But the problem is he didn't
trust God either and that's not good and that's not right. It's also one of the greatest
examples of unbelief in all of the life of David. David was right not to trust
Saul. Saul had just said he wouldn't hurt David but he knew better
than that. But to say he's going to kill me one day, not he's
going to try, but he's going to kill me. That's unbelief. Because we know
God has promised David that he would be king one day. And as
king, Saul's not going to touch David because David would have
every advantage then and every protection against Saul. So there's
absolutely really no reason to believe. You see the two sides
of it. In human understanding, in human
reasoning, what David said made perfect sense. Saul's gonna kill
me. Sure looked like it. But it makes
no sense when you take the word of God into account. It made
no sense whatsoever then. He had no reason to believe that
Saul would kill him. He didn't trust Saul, and that's
good. Don't trust a man who is proven to be godless. That's
one lesson here. Somebody that's proven to you
to be a godless liar, with no honor, don't trust them. Be smart
about it. But Saul wasn't the only one
that had a say in this thing. God had said that David would
be king. God anointed David as his king. And not only that, but God had
shown David that the advantage means nothing anyway. Saul had
the advantage over David in every possible way. But God had shown
over and over that that didn't mean anything. He had put Saul
at David's feet twice. He had caused David to repeatedly
escape being speared to the wall in the same room with Saul. He
made it real clear that he was protecting David. He gave David
victory over Goliath. And David knew it was God that
did that. He said, God will deliver you
into my hand. And he did. So he knew God had
done that. If you were going to worry about
odds and advantages, surely the day that scrawny David goes up
against Goliath, the giant, would have been the day to do that.
But God showed that it didn't mean anything. Outward appearances
are nothing. If they were, don't go against
Goliath. If it meant anything. And then of course, just the
last encounter that they had. Saul was laid out at David's
feet to do with as he would. He could have given the order
to kill him. Or to spare him. He gave the order to spare him.
To leave him alone. But David knows that that's not
luck. That Saul was given to him that way. Put in his hand. There's no luck. That's a clear
message from God to David that armies don't matter. Earthly authority doesn't matter.
As far as the outcome of this was concerned. And so that's
an even more important lesson. Don't trust man, but more importantly
than that, trust God. Trust God. So what happened here
with David? With all these clear revelations from God, God showing
him these providences from God, showing him that Saul wasn't
a threat, Saul wasn't going to be a problem. Why would David
be saying on one occasion concerning Goliath, God's going to deliver
you into my hand and I'm going to take your head off. And David ran at Goliath that
day. He ran at him. And then on another day he's
despondent and fatalistic and sees no hope of surviving his
circumstances. Much less imminently dangerous
circumstances than Goliath standing there. Well, so what happened? I can
answer that question in a couple of ways. What happened? Why is
David so inconsistent? Well, the first way to answer
that is this. He's just like you. That's why.
That's why. He's just like me. We can't make
heroes of these men in the scriptures. They're just us. We see us in
them. As well as seeing the Savior
in them at times. As types of Him. So He's inconsistent
and fickle and off one day and on the next and off again the
next because He's just like us. But then also what happened?
Well the same thing that happened to Simon Peter who one day was
denying the Lord Jesus Christ. He was afraid to admit to a little
maiden at a fire that he was one of the Lord's disciples,
because he was afraid he would be arrested and meet the same
punishment as our Lord. And then not too long after that,
a few years maybe after that, he faces down those same religious
Jews and accuses them of killing the Lord of Glory, the Prince
of Life. Those same Jews who had the same
authority to do what they would with him, he confessed Christ
then at the risk of his own life. What happened? What's the difference?
How could there be such inconsistency? Well, two simple words, flesh
and spirit. All through the Word of God we
see it, don't we? Flesh and spirit. Two more words, faith and unbelief. And they go together, they correspond. Flesh equals unbelief. The fruit
of the Spirit, on the other hand, is what? Among other things,
faith. The fruit of the Spirit. Christ liveth in us. You could
use two more words. You and Christ. Paul said, not
I, but Christ. That's how I want to live. the
way Paul said he lived. I live this life by the faith
of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Christ
liveth in us, in his people, in his sheep, but we still live
in us too. Don't we? I run into myself a
lot. I know I still live in here. And often that's very evident,
isn't it? And it's really that simple. Flesh and spirit, faith
and unbelief. You and Christ. Christ dwelleth
in me, but I dwelleth in me. The old man dwelleth in me. How
in the world could David serve the Philistines? He served his enemies. He served
the world. He served the flesh. How can
you do that? Well, listen to what Paul said
in Romans 7.21. I find then a law. That when I would do good, evil
is present with me. Have you found that too? People
love to argue about things, don't they? Argue about what is that,
you know? Is it two natures, or is it just... Well, clearly, we experience
it as believers, don't we? Of course we have two natures.
Of course there's flesh and spirit. It's all through the Word of
God. Listen to what he said. I find
that evil is present with me, for I delight in the law of God
after the inward man. That wasn't true before, but
it is now. Why? Because I have a new nature.
I'm a partaker of the divine nature. But I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin which is in my members. There's love for God and then
there's disdain. In the same heart. Not the same
heart exactly, but in the same bosom. In the same man. We have a new heart and we have
an old heart. We have flesh and we do have the Spirit of God
dwelling in us. The Spirit of Christ. The Holy
Spirit of God. The divine nature. A new man
created in Christ Jesus, unto good works, ordained unto good
works, created in righteousness and true holiness. The flesh
never believes. The spirit never not believes. Bringing men to captivity to
the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that
I am. It's not a happy experience, really, all told. struggling against this flesh.
When you're looking at that, you're going to say, oh, wretched.
When you're looking to Him now, you're going to say, everything
is wonderful and life is good and I'm happy and I'm just ready
to go be with Him. Life is wonderful and it just
gets better after that. But when you're looking within,
as Paul was here, oh, wretched man that I am. I am wretched. Who shall save me from the body
of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. That's the answer to the question.
That's who's going to deliver me. Jesus Christ my Lord. There's
me and there's him and he wins. He wins. Every time. So then
with the mind I myself serve the law of God. He's renewed
my mind. Repentance is a change of mind.
But with the flesh, I serve the law of sin. How can David serve
the Philistines? That's how. Romans chapter 7. All of us are serving with our
flesh the world, the evil nature that's in it. We serve ourselves.
We're servants of sin in that sense, by nature. Now, sin no
longer has dominion over us. but it's always present with
us our flesh always serves the Philistines and at times God
will take his hand away just to the extent he never takes
his loving guidance and protection and sustainment away from us
utterly. But he'll allow. And you could
argue that too. God doesn't allow anything. He
does things. Well, I think that's the best word for it. He allows
us. To sometimes, for our flesh to
shine through, to show through. And that's what's happening here
with David. The flesh always serves the Philistines. The Philistines
represent sin, the world, this evil world, the godless nature
that we all still have. within us and there's a constant
battle taking place in all of us the two do not live peaceably
together Galatians 5 16 this I say then walk in the spirit
and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh turn over there
with me to Galatians 5 please I want you to see this because
there's a lot of teaching in this little little passage of
scripture here in Galatians 5 that directly relates to our text
Galatians 5 16 Galatians 5 16 Now this is Paul exhorting the
church at Galatia and us to walk in the spirit Walk in the spirit
and not the flesh Walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfill
the lust of the flesh It's going to be there, but you're not going
to fulfill it if you're walking in the spirit For the flesh lusteth
against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these
are contrary the one to the other. And notice this. So that you
cannot do the things that you would. Think about that for a second.
They're contrary to the one to the other, so which one wins?
Well, it's important to understand what we are, and what God has
done within us, and what the consequences of that, good and
bad, are. It's really all good, because
if you just have one nature, you're in big trouble. Two natures
is good, even though there's a conflict. That conflict is
a good conflict to have. But notice the nature of this
conflict, which one win? Well, the nature of it is this,
you can't do the things that you would. It's not that when
you're in the spirit, you're walking in the spirit, you're
perfect. And when you're not walking in the spirit, you're
evil. You're holy sometimes and not
holy. No, the nature of the matter of having two natures is that
you never can do. perfectly. You can never do.
You see that in the text? I didn't make that up. I'm learning
that with you. You can never do the things that
your renewed mind wants to do. You just can't. The flesh is
going to restrict you from doing that. You cannot fulfill the
righteousness of the law yourself. It's fulfilled in you by Christ,
but not yourself. So you're not like sometimes
perfect, you're in the spirit now, so you're holy. No, you're
not. You can never do the things that
you would. Not perfectly, not in a way that
measures up to God's righteousness. But thank God for this. Next
verse, look at verse 18. Thank God for this. But if you
be led of the spirit, you're not under the law. You talk about
beautiful, think about that for a second. You can never measure
up to God's law because of the flesh. Yes, the spirit lusts
against the flesh too, and that's a good thing. I'm glad that the
spirit never leaves the flesh alone. Aren't you glad? Because
in spite of our flesh, we worship God by his grace, because of
his spirit. In spite of our flesh, we love
him. In spite of our flesh, we serve
Him. But in spite of the Spirit, we
don't love Him like we ought to. Our love is full of sin. It's fickle. It's corrupt. Our worship, none of it. Because
in spite of the Spirit, the flesh still. And we can never measure
up to the law. If you're led by the Spirit,
if you have the Spirit at all, if this conflict even exists
in you, it's okay that you can't measure up to the law because
you're not under the law. Oh, I love that verse, verse
18. If you be led of the Spirit at
all, even led of it, not made perfect by it in this flesh,
not made sinless by it in this flesh, you still can never measure
up to the law, but because God has done a work for you and in
you, evidenced by the work in you, you're not under the law
of God. You're under the grace of God.
Christ was made under the law for you. He was responsible to
keep the law for you. He was responsible, made responsible,
willingly responsible for your sin, you're not keeping of the
law, you're breaking of the law for you. And so the law has no
claim on you, you're not under the law. Well, I'm glad of that. So remember when the flesh is
fighting against the spirit and you're saying, oh, wretched man
that I am, don't forget who shall deliver me. Don't forget to answer
that question. My savior who was made under
the law, made a curse for me, he delivers me from the body
of this wretched death. I'm not under that law because
of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, reckoned in him, found
in him, seen in him. We're not gonna be judged according
to the law. We're judged in Christ and found faithful in him. Thank
God for that. That's a beautiful passage of
scripture right there. And it explains so much about
what's happening with David here and with us. This is not just
about David, it's about us. And it's about the same savior
who was David's hope and ours this very night. We have one
hope, we have the same hope. One Lord, one faith, one birth.
So we need to understand this when studying the life of David
and the scriptures at all, to see Christ in him sometimes,
but also to see us in him at times like this. But even when
we see us in him, it abounds to the glory of Christ because
it reminds us of what he saved us from. Reminds us of what we
are and how He's still, He's saving me every minute. He's
saving me from my flesh right now. He's saving me from my sin
right now. And having begun that good work,
I know He'll finish it. How gloriously saved we are by
Him. You see, when we see us in David,
we see that too, how gloriously saved we are. David got weary,
didn't he? He got beaten down by his flesh.
And we all have been there, we all often are there. Imagine month after month of
living in rocks and caves, concerned not only for yourself, but also
all those who've trusted you. Those other men he was responsible
for worrying and sometimes believing, sometimes knowing what God promised
and resting in that, but sometimes not. Sometimes leaning on the
arm of the flesh and worrying and thinking, what can I do to
get out of this? He reasoned a way out of this that had nothing
to do with God and it ignored the promises of God. And we know, you and I know what
God has promised us, don't we? And yet how often do we act contrary
to that? How often do we act as though
we didn't know any such thing, never heard the gospel? Boy,
if we're honest, that's a lot, isn't it? That's every day. It's
every day. Though our Lord says to his little
flock, fear not. And we see that recently on Sunday
morning, fear not. Have you just said, well, okay,
Lord, that's enough of fear. I've had enough of fear now,
I'm gonna quit fearing now. And just that's it? It's at the
end of it? Our Lord has said, don't worry
about money and the things that it can buy. We just recently
saw that, didn't we? How beautifully and powerfully
he taught us that. Don't worry about money, the
things it can buy, seek me. Me alone, always me, and I'll
take care of all the rest for you. I know what you need and
what you don't need. If you could just have everything
you wished, you don't know what you need and what you don't need.
Only He does. You couldn't be in a better situation. You just
couldn't be better for you as a believer. Just quit worrying. How about
that? How's that working out for you? So we see David and we sympathize
with him, don't we? We understand. He began to think,
you know, what's going to happen? This ain't looking good. And
he began to be afraid. He began to look at his situation. He's Simon Peter on the waves.
He took his eyes off of the Savior and he began to see the winds
and the waves and the ocean. And himself, I can't swim, I
can't walk on water. I can't fight these waves." And
that's a sinker every time. And so David got weary like we
do. I hope you're doing better with
it than me, by the way. And it's okay not to trust men.
That's fine. Don't forget that in there. It's
fine not to trust men. You shouldn't trust men. If it's
just your boss and their boss that you had to trust, you might
well worry. They're wicked men. They don't
care about you, probably. I don't know who your boss is.
I had some that I was their best friend one day, but if it helped
the bottom line, they'd have sold me. They might well cast you aside
to their advantage. They might do that. David was
right not to trust Saul. But to say Saul is going to kill
me one day is directly in opposition to what God said. That's not
up to Saul. Do you think it's up to your
boss whether you have a job tomorrow or not? Do you really think it's
up to him? I reckon not. And that's just one simple example
of things that we sometimes worry about. Maybe you don't worry
about that. Maybe you worry about your family. Maybe you worry
about your children. You know whose hands their lives are in? Not yours. The Lord said in Deuteronomy
32, 39, see now that I, even I, am he. Listen to this, now
this is God speaking. See now that I, even I, am he. See this. Look at this. Take
this in. Understand this. Wrap your heart
around this. There is no God with me. I kill
and I make a life. You say, oh, that sounds threatening.
No, that's the best thing I've ever heard, that that prerogative
is God's and not anybody else's. That's comforting, isn't it?
Is it comforting to you to hear God say, I kill and I make a
living? Is that threatening to you or
is that comforting? If you're one of his, that's a great comfort.
Who else would you want deciding that? I kill, I make alive, I
wound, and I heal, and neither is there any that can deliver
out of my hand. If I say live, there's nobody
that can harm you. And if I say die, there's nobody
that can help you. I'm glad it's that way, aren't
you? Oh my, the Lord Jesus Christ, listen to this in Revelation
117, when John saw him, he said, I felt that his feet is dead.
And he laid his right hand upon me saying unto me, fear not,
I am the first and the last. I'm he that liveth and was dead
and behold, I'm alive forevermore. He had power over his own life.
He said, I have power to lay my life down and I have power
to take it again. And I have the keys of hell and
of death. Nobody else is getting in and
out without me. Boy, that's comforting. David said, Saul's gonna kill
me someday. He's gonna have to go through
the key keeper in order to do that. And the key keeper already
said, you're gonna be king. You're gonna be king. Listen to what Saul said in the
verse right before. Then Saul said to David, Blessed
be thou, my son David, thou shalt both do great things and shalt
still prevail. So David went on his way and
Saul returned to his place. I don't blame David at all for
not taking Saul's word for this, but what Saul said was evidently
true. He said, you're going to prosper,
you're going to do great things, you are going to prevail. I wouldn't take Saul's word for
that, but I'd take God's word for it if God gave me faith and
sustained me to believe it, restrained my unbelief. We ought to take
God's word for it. David not believing Saul is one
thing, but not believing God. What Saul said was what God had
said. Remember now that faith is not
believing that everything's going to be all right in temporal matters,
you know, as far as like, well, is Saul going to kill me or not? Well, I don't know unless God
tells me one way or the other. And faith, listen, it's not the
power of positive thinking. Faith is believing God. If you
don't have any word from God on a matter, whatever it is,
am I going to live or am I going to die? Tomorrow. Well, faith is believing you're
going to live. No, it's not. No. Faith is believing God. Faith is believing that whether
I live or die, he doeth all things well, and I'm in his hand, and
it's all going to be fine. Whether I live or die. And if you start thinking, well,
you know, and people say, well, I just believe, you know, I just
believe, I have faith that everything's going to be all right in this
certain specific matter. Well, unless God told you one
way or the other, it's just silly to say that. I just believe she's
not going to die of cancer. You know, I just believe based
on what? It's just silly to say that,
unless God has told you. And he doesn't do a whole lot
of that these days. He's not going to tell you specifically,
but listen to this. This is important now. This is key to this whole
story. Such are the promises of God
to us believers. We do have great and precious
promises from him, and such are they, and such is the God who
gave them, that even though we have no specific word from God
on a specific matter, we believe that no matter how it turns out,
it's gonna be good. Don't we? Paul said we do. We know, he said, that all things
work together for good. To those that love God. Do you
love God? This God? To those who are the called according
to His purpose. If you're called according to
His purpose, you love Him. Because if He called you according
to His purpose, it's because He loves you. If He loves you,
you're going to love Him. Not as much, but you're going
to love Him. Oh, it's going to be good, isn't
it? It's believing God. I believe God about that. Don't
know what's going to happen, specifically, unless God tells
me specifically. But such are His wonderful promises
to me that whatever happens, are you worried about it? Are
you really worried about it? Money and the things it can buy,
even life and death, matters of life and death. It's in his hand and I'm not
saying we shouldn't be concerned about things. I'm concerned for
people that are lost that I love. But you know that's in his hands
too. Go to him with it. May I do that? Flesh and spirit. The two natures that are in the
believer are strange companions. They're in the same person but
they're completely contrary one to another. And the unbeliever
has no understanding of that. At all. An unbeliever will deny
the existence of the two natures. They'll say, that's silly, that's
ridiculous. Two natures, there ain't no two natures. You know
why? Because they ain't got but one. They don't know what you're talking
about. You'd be hard pressed to find
a believer now that would deny it. I'm not judging anybody. But I'm just telling you, a believer
experiences it. There ain't no doubt in my mind
about it. The believer understands. Listen
to Mark 9. We got a little bit of time and
a lot of notes left, but I'm gonna cut it short. But I think
we should look at Mark 9, verse 17. The believer understands this
now. One of the multitude answered
and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath
a dumb spirit. And wheresoever he taketh him,
he teareth him, and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth,
and pineth away. And I spake to thy disciples
that they should cast him out, and they could not. And he answereth
him and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you?
How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto me. And they brought
him unto him. And when he saw him, straightaway
the spirit tear him. And he fell on the ground and
wallowed foaming. And he asked his father, how
long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, of a child.
And oft times it hath cast him into the fire and into the waters
to destroy him. But if thou canst do anything,
have compassion. on us and help us. And Jesus
said unto him, if thou canst believe, all things are possible
to him that believeth. And straightway the father of
the child cried out and said with tears, you picture this
now. He cried out. He didn't whisper this. Lord,
I believe. Help thou, help thou mine unbelief. Help me. Help me to believe. If believing means that everything
is going to be alright, and that's the way our Lord presented this.
If you can believe, if that's true now, if salvation
is by faith only Lord, help me, help me believe. If I can't be
saved unless I believe, help me. I believe, help thou mine unbelief. Do you understand that? I do too, I do. Of course the
Lord saved the boy. So David becomes a servant to
the Philistines. What a sad thing to show us what
we are by nature and to show us to cry for help like that
man did. That's a cry for help. We've
got to believe the Son of God now. And I can't do that unless
he helps me, unless he causes it. The servants of sin. Achish is
the king that sent David away in chapter 21 when David feigned
madness. Remember he spit all over him,
slobbered on himself and acted like he was a madman so that
the king wouldn't kill him. That was Achish. And if you think
about it, we've been looking at David's life for a good while
now. Can you think of any other time that David messed up? I
mean just messed up than that. When he went to Achish. The enemies, Gath, Goliath of
Gath. He went to the hometown of Goliath
for help. And Achish of course was gonna
kill him and he had to act like a fool in order to get out of
it. That's what this world does to
you now as a believer. It'll make you, it'll turn you
into a fool. Well, no, I take that back. It'll show you that
you're a fool. God'll show you. And it's by
association with this world that that comes out now so often.
Akish means, his name means this, only a man. Why would you trust
that? Why would you put any hope in
only a man? Whenever you trust only a man,
you're gonna be in trouble. You're gonna end up a fool. Christ is a man, but not only
a man. He's the God man. That's who
we trust, not only a man. So David went to war and he won
spoils for Achish and he impressed Achish. He brought all these
spoils back from war. He fought against the Geshurites
and the Gesurites and the Amalekites, verse eight. But when Achish
asked David where he had been, he lied. And he told him that
he'd been fighting against the Israelites, verse 10. Those names
in verse 10, those are Israelites. So that Achish would trust him.
He's trying to gain the favor of the world, of the godless. What a sad, sad thing. So the
world has made David a servant, and the world has made him a
liar. A liar. The only way a believer is going
to impress this world, or let me say it this way, is going
to have any communion with this world is by lying. Not being truthful about who
you are. Where's the David that killed
Goliath? That David, Achish wouldn't have had anything to do with. But now this is another David.
This is the flesh. And they hit it off just fine.
My flesh and this world have a lot in common. What is the
world but a bunch of people just like me? The old nature. And David was promoted. Think
about this. Now, two more lessons. We've
got seven minutes. Two more lessons here. David was promoted. Verse
2 of 28. Achish made him one of his main
bodyguards, one of his personal bodyguards. And Saul stopped
pursuing David. Verse 4 of our chapter we read
a while ago. Saul gave up on him. Saul quit
pursuing him. So hey, that's why David did
it. Everything's working out great.
Yeah, this world will tell you that. It'll look that way. The
world has advantages. It has things to give. But at
what cost? At what cost? It has its benefits. You may
well prosper in the flesh by compromising the truth and serving
the flesh. But at what cost? You don't play
games with God. Now we're going to see in chapter
30 that the consequences of David's 16 months in Gath and Ziklag
were great. The consequences were absolutely
horrific. And we're going to see that in
chapter 30. But God delivered David from those consequences.
God delivered him from them. But think about this now. It
could have gone the other way. God delivered David in chapter
30 from the horrible consequences of his affiliation with the godless. But God didn't always do that.
God could have caused David to suffer the horrible consequences
and yet spared his soul. And yet he'd have had to live
with those consequences for the rest of his life. God does do
that. It didn't have to go the way that it did for David. But let's close by considering
the last verse where he said, Akish said this, David is gonna
be my servant forever. Can you hear the world saying
that to you? I've got him now, I've got him now. He's gonna
be my servant forever. That could be true, that could
be true. It could have gone that way.
David was on a downward spiral here, and a very bad one, a very
horrible downward spiral for 16 months. He's not the David
that slew Goliath. His flesh is revealing itself,
isn't it? And it was only by God's grace
and providence that David was spared from fighting against
his own people. In chapter 29, we'll see that
too. Soon, Lord willing, David was
spared fighting against his own people in chapter 29. He was
spared in chapter 30 from the horrible consequences. But two
things about that. Just in this story we see David
was spared. God's grace was great toward
David. He didn't have to suffer any
of the consequences of his affiliation with the godless here. But don't
take away from that, well I can just do that then and God will
bail me out when the time. Don't presume upon the grace
of God. We have stories in the scriptures that don't end this
happy. Saul himself. His story started out pretty
good. The Lord anointed him. Remember
what Samuel said to Saul in chapter 13, verse 13. He said, you've
done foolishly. You haven't kept the commandment
of the Lord when he didn't kill everybody like God told him to
in that city. For now would the Lord, listen to what he said,
now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever. But now thy kingdom shall not
continue. It could have gone that way,
but it's not going that way. In David's situation, it could
have gone the other way, too. But it didn't, by God's grace. Not a happy ending for Saul. Judas walked with the Son of
God for three years. walked in his presence now heard
his word heard his secret explanations of his parables that he told
only his disciples was one of the favored twelve that walked
with him for three years in close companionship and served him
served the Lord Jesus Christ but Judas's story doesn't have
a happy ending Judas had the world in his heart
just like we do. Just like we do. So don't presume
now upon God. All of the disciples asked, Lord,
is it I? Why wasn't it? Because they were
better than Judas? It's one thing now to be comforted
in the character of the Lord, that he doesn't let his sheep
go. But it's another thing to presume upon his grace. But here's the last thing. Be
comforted that the Lord does not let his sheep go. Don't,
don't, shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid. Don't
think like that. Don't use this as an excuse.
Don't presume upon God's grace. But what a comfort it is. If
you're the Lord's sheep, he's not going to let you go. He's
not going to let you serve the world forever.